served and eaten at Frederick's own table.

They had clambakes at the head of the bay and musselbakes down by the
roaring surf; and Tom told shamelessly of the _Halcyon_, and of the run
of contraband, and asked Frederick before them all how he had managed to
smuggle the horse back to the fishermen without discovery. All the young
men were in the conspiracy with Polly to pamper Tom to his heart's
desire. And Frederick heard the true inwardness of the killing of the
deer; of its purchase from the overstocked Golden Gate Park; of its
crated carriage by train, horse-team and mule-back to the fastnesses of
Round Mountain; of Tom falling asleep beside the deer-run the first time
it was driven by; of the pursuit by the young men, the jaded saddle
horses, the scrambles and the falls, and the roping of it at Burnt Ranch
Clearing; and, finally, of the triumphant culmination, when it was
driven past a second time and Tom had dropped it at fifty yards. To
Frederick there was a vague hurt in it all. When had such consideration
been shown him?

There were days when Tom could not go out, postponements of outdoor
frolics, when, still the centre, he sat and drowsed in the big chair,
waking, at times, in that unexpected queer, bright way of his, to roll
a cigarette and call for his _ukulele_--a sort of miniature guitar of
Portuguese invention. Then, with strumming and tumtuming, the live
cigarette laid aside to the imminent peril of polished wood, his full
baritone would roll out in South Sea _hulas_ and sprightly French and
Spanish songs.

One, in particular, had pleased Frederick at first. The favourite song
of a Tahitian king, Tom explained--the last of the Pomares, who had
himself composed it and was wont to lie on his mats by the hour singing
it. It consisted of the repetition of a few syllables. "_E meu ru ru a
vau_," it ran, and that was all of it, sung in a stately, endless,
ever-varying chant, accompanied by solemn chords from the _ukelele_.
Polly took great joy in teaching it to her uncle, but when, himself
questing for some of this genial flood of life that bathed about his
brother, Frederick essayed the song, he noted suppressed glee on the
part of his listeners, which increased, through giggles and snickers, to
a great outburst of laughter. To his disgust and dismay, he learned
that the simple phrase he had repeated and repeated was nothing else
than "I am so drunk." He had been made a fool of. Over and over,
solemnly and